We Are the War

Vietnam veteran and author John Harriman returns to Mudville with the sixth installment of his series Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq. See the intro to the series here).

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IS IRAQ ANOTHER VIETNAM?

Dear Warrior . . .

I spoke to one of your mothers before our send-off ceremony here in our small town for the Montana soldiers going to Iraq. She said her son wanted to know, "What's the big deal about going to Iraq? It's just our job."

I'd guess most of you would have the same reaction to Vietnam: What's the big deal? It's ancient history.
Vietnam.

It's more than a word, more than history. It's a word like Woodstock to your parents' generation. Or 9/11 in your own time. (Okay, so 9/11 is a number, but you get the point.) Vietnam is more. It's an emotion, a symbol of something deeply felt, a combat internal just beneath the skin of America.

Ask two questions of anybody who lived Vietnam, civilian protestor or military vet. First ask whether we won or lost World War II. What you'll get is a laugh. And something like this: Of course we won, you idiot. Don't you read your history?

Okay, so WWII truly is history.

Then ask if we won or lost in Vietnam. What you'll see is heat. What you'll hear is invective. That's not history. That's emotion. The emotion of politics, Tonkin, dissent, betrayal, parades or no parades, shame, spit-a host of images. All of them edgy.

So we come gingerly to the question: Is Iraq another Vietnam?

Let's set aside the politics and emotion and come at it from a soldier's point of view.

I wrote these letters and the book they will eventually compose because I felt a spike in the emotional temperature of America after we won the conventional war in Iraq. Right away the military was asked to win the peace. You are being asked to Iraqi-ize the country in much the same way, and using just as awkward a term, soldiers were to Vietnamize that war, that is removing a military threat and turning their country over to the people.

All at once, all the same arguments about our soldiers as anti-insurgent forces bubbled up. We heard words like quagmire, unwinnable and, of course, Vietnam.

We veterans of Vietnam know a thing or two about that word and those feelings. Even if we fall on opposite sides of the political fence.

What we know, we can share with you. Think of it as a kind of survival guide like Rogers' Rangers standing orders from the pre-Revolution era. Maj. Robert Rogers wrote 19 instructions. Simple, straight, sensible things, like no. 1: Don't forget nothing. And no. 14: Don't sit down to eat without posting sentries. If you can't find the standing orders in your army literature, you can Google them in an instant.

You'll find a single theme running through all 19 of them: Never let down your guard.

It's the theme that runs through the head of every combat veteran, especially as the shooting war peters out. In even the most vigorous training test, you can always close your eyes and shut down your mind with the thought: This is only a test; it's only a test; I need the sleep so I can pass the test.

In the war zone, every time you want to shut your eyes, repeat a different mantra: This is not a test, not a test; If I slack off now, I may never wake up.

A lot of men died in earlier wars just because they slacked off. Don't.

Till next week . . .

God bless you and Godspeed.

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John is a veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam and a member of the American Legion. These columns are excerpts from an upcoming book. His current book, Delta Force #1 : Operation Michael's Sword is a fictional account of the 9/11 attacks and the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom.